How {Not} to Buy and Move a Used Swing Set

Today is a great example of why I started blogging. If I weren’t writing this down, I’d be telling this story 50 times, and although I do love the sound of my own voice, I also love efficiency. Plus, a bunch of you would never get to hear my crazy stories because you’re not blessed enough to know me in real life. JK! No, but really, my friends do tell me that I am not normal and they get a kick out my adventures. And boy was today an adventure!

If you follow me on Facebook (which you should) you’d know that I bought this ginormous Rainbow swing set off Craigslist yesterday for $150. These are the Craigslist pics.

I have been stalking Craigslist for a swing set (and a vintage travel trailer) for months now. So when I found this good deal the other day I text the guy, Cole, and set up a time to meet him at the house yesterday morning to check it out. The set was in worse condition than it looked in the pics and it turns out Cole is a 14 year old entrepreneur who sells swing sets for other people. I think he pocketed the entire $150 I gave him. Plus, I wouldn’t be surprised if some of his clients paid him for his service because they are getting the swing set hauled out of there. I sent these pics to hubby and was granted his {symbolic} approval despite the damage. My daughter Lulu came with me to check it out and she loved it!

Since hubby was off today, I told Cole we’d be back in this morning to take it apart and bring it home. Cole’s dad (who has to drive him to his appointments) recommended renting a trailer over a truck because it’s lower and easier to load. This turned out to be a lot easier said than done!

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I booked a trailer at U-Haul for 7am today and sent hubby over in my Honda Pilot to pick it up. He thought we should start at like 9am, but I reminded him that things always take so much longer than we think they’re going to. Ha! I remembered hauling a U-Haul trailer before, so I figured I’d be fine. Wrong! Apparently when my mom, brother and I rented a trailer the last time, in West Virginia, when we were cleaning out my grandma’s house before it was sold, my brother drove it all the way back to Jersey, at night, without any lights hooked up to it. Ooops. I forgot that part.

…So when hubby got to U-Haul he was denied. They could wire my car for electric, but not until that afternoon. Boo! We were supposed to meet Cole at 8am and the kids would be at camp from 9-noon, which was our prime time to get this job done. On to plan B. I checked online and our local trailer store {I know right, did those words just come out of my mouth!} now rents trailers. So hubby went right there when they opened at 8am. They were able to take him right away to do the electrical for $100. But hubby thought we should just go for the $300 job where they also attach a hook-up for trailer brakes. Apparently some trailers have their own brakes, but those don’t work unless your car is wired for them. I agreed, because I am still itching to get a vintage travel trailer. But now hubby was going to be stuck there.

Now it’s almost 9am and I’ve had to drag my kids out of bed by their feet {um, yes, I really did} to get them ready for camp. I drop my daughter off okay, but my son insists on helping me with his new swing set, so he’s still with me. Then my friends {rightfully so} want to talk about what a crazy person I am in the parking lot for a while. Okay, now off to pick up hubby from the trailer place. Oh wait, hubby didn’t bring any of the tools with him, so I had to grab them. Now Cole is calling because his mom has dropped him off at the house already. I had called him and pushed it back to 9:20am, but we were still late. That’s Cole and the hubby.

Eventually we got there. In hubby’s truck, which was still full of composted horse manure from Saturday (see post here) because I {apparently} broke the tailgate and it’s been a pain in the butt to get it out of there. It’s totally embarrassing. More $ I wasn’t planning to spend, but it has to be fixed. We plug in our driver to an extension cord and hook up the bit to use it as a socket driver and hubby says it doesn’t have enough power. Weird. And instead of looking into it myself, I just grab the regular socket wrench and start loosening the bolts to the slide. It came off pretty easily, but at least one of the rusted bolts broke off in the wood. Oh and the housekeeper let the dogs out in the yard and they ran around like crazy jumping on all of us and scaring the crap out of my son. Not fun.

Next we tackled the monkey bars. These came off pretty easily as well. Then my son has to pee. Luckily he does this in the woods behind our house all the time and this yard was wooded as well. Five minutes later he has to poop. So now I’m driving him home to poop. Luckily this house was only a few miles away. Now back to the swing set to see hubby and Cole have removed the giant 10 foot high swing beam. Yay!

But now it’s time for Cole to leave and us to go pick up the trailer and my car. So work stops again. Boo. But of course when get to the trailer place hubby realizes he never grabbed the hitch, so now we’re driving back to our house. And my patience is wearing super thin. Then back to the trailer place, where the trailer is not entirely ready to go. Plus it’s time to pick up my daughter Lulu from camp already. So back home I go. Luckily a friend offers to pick Lu up from camp so I go home with my son to make a green tea smoothie for myself. I am feeling better as the smoothie is blending. I decide to add 2 frozen bananas and the freaking Ninja blender stops working. Motor dead. Not kidding. I filter the frozen banana chunks out and drink my damn smoothie anyway. And head back to the swing set. More freaking $ to get a new blender. 🙁

Hubby is there with the trailer and we manage to take the entire swing set apart. We were hoping to leave things more intact than we did. We just couldn’t carry the bigger sections, so we had to break it down further.

That’s when we discovered what poor condition the deck was in. Eeek!

At one point hubby tried to back the trailer up the long windy driveway and I freaked out because I was so afraid he was going to wreck something, like the homeowner’s car, that I made him pull back out. So we carried everything down except that last 4 biggest pieces. We loaded it up in the trailer and drove home. I was going to follow behind hubby and the trailer on the way home, but he made a wrong turn and I just kept driving and let him figure it out.

He made it home, we unload everything in the driveway, and I start power washing. And boy am I hungry. All day I’ve been dreaming about the sub, um I mean hoagie, as they call it in South Jersey, that would be waiting for me when my daughter was dropped off at 3pm. It was hoagie day at camp and I paid $10 for 2 hoagies, one for me and one for hubby.

My friend pulls up, Lulu gets out of the car eating a meat hoagie and I am relieved because she’s not eating my hoagie {I’m vegetarian}. When I ask for my hoagie she says, “My friends ate it for lunch.” FOR THE LOVE OF PETE!!! OMG I am totally defeated at this point!

While power washing I devised a plan to get the remaining pieces down the hill. We would drive the big pieces down in hubby’s truck, then load them into the trailer. Great, except his truck was still full of compost. So that’s what he did while I power washed. He shoveled out all the compost and I directed him where it needed to go in the yard. Then we headed back to the swing set house one last time and I’m so glad we had finished the disassembly earlier because I didn’t have any more concentration left in me.

We loaded the ginormous spiral slide into the pickup truck and hubby sat in the back with the slide while I drove it down the hill.. And damn it, my phone died, so I don’t have any pics of that. Total bummer, because it was hysterical. I drove the truck back up the driveway again and we loaded the remaining pieces in record time because our kids were whining and the homeowners were gawking at us out the window like we were some low-life’s stealing their sh*t. I’ve never “met” people so rude. The teenage daughter came home while we were working, got out of her car with her tennis racket, scowled at me, walked by and said nothing. Sheesh! I’m sure it never occurred to them that we live in the same town. Whatever. We loaded everything up and drove home. People are staring at us. It’s so funny! Of course I ran in to get my camera…

We unloaded the rest after we ate dinner and put the kids to bed. But before I could go to sleep… one last thing to really piss me off. When I looked in my car, which I hadn’t driven all day, there’s a stupid freaking box right where my leg goes.

Hubby tells me that’s what we paid $300 for, the brake sensor for the trailer. He must be out of his freaking mind!!!!! If I weren’t so tired I’d be yelling and screaming. I cannot believe he let someone do this to my car! And this was the installers second choice because there were two other holes in my car. Grrrrgh!

What a looooong day!

P.S. – You’ll notice that buying a new swing set was not on my to do list. That’s always the case around here! That’s why I never get through the to do list! Am I the only one like that???? Please tell me I’m not. 😉

Right?!?! My hubby thinks it’s just me that freaks about this stuff. Looks like I will be learning how to DIY some way to patch the holes in my car. Add it to the list! 🙂 Your mold/water damage reminds me of our ongoing basement issues. It’s like the entire house stood still for over a year while we dealt with/ignored that.

Awesome blog!! I own my own business installing & moving wooden swing sets all over New England & having been doing it for 15 years. The next time someone tries to haggle me on my price moving a set I’ll have to direct them here so they see what they’re in for if they do it themselves!

Quick question – outside of all the side bar things that happened, how long did it take to breakdown and are out ultimately glad you did it? Did you just replace the broken pieces? What size were the bolts and nuts? Thanks for the summary, it’s helpful for those of us in the same situation.